Haunting Onyx
by evenstar1791
Summary: Slavery is a curse.  Even to those no longer involved with it.  It leaves scars both physical and mental that take more than a little kindness to heal.  What can heal Sakura's scars? AU
1. Chapter 1

**1- Her Terrible Secret**

Damn sleep insomnia…it drives me crazy. Another random idea popping into my head while I can't sleep. Just love these things. And then there's the fact that I'm _addicted_ to violent and gruesome stories…it doesn't help matters that I've been on a Naruto kick lately…I also apologize for the fact that this is yet _another_ slavery story…though it's not nearly as bad as Black Leather…or Unspeakables.

Warning! There _is_ OC action in this, but not really as much of a pairing situation.

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Sakura was six years old when it started. Her parents had kept a rich lifestyle, but couldn't afford it. They're spending had caught up with them, to the point that they had to sell their house…and their daughter to make up for it. Sakura didn't really understand at the time what it meant when they said they had to sell her into slavery, but she figured if she could help her family get situated again, it wouldn't be too bad.

The thing was, when they handed her off to the family who'd bought her, she never saw her parents again. After the first family she'd been owned by were all massacred, she spent almost a year locked in slave warehouses, being abused and otherwise _trained_ to be a proper slave. After someone else had finally bought her from the warehouse, she became so scarred that she shouldn't have had to walk around in the too small clothes that showed every inch of skin except her privates they made her wear.

Three owners and just as many stints in the slave warehouses later, she made it to the kind hands of Tsunade. She was fourteen when the kind woman had bought her and treated her like her own daughter. When she turned fifteen, Sakura was released and Tsunade adopted her. The woman hadn't been able to find Sakura's parents no matter how hard she searched.

It was on her first day at school as an actual student that she saw them. The two familiar faces that haunted her most in her battered existence. No one in her new school knew that Sakura had been a slave, and she wanted to keep it that way. She knew that she'd never be able to survive in school if anyone knew about that past. The only thing that saved her sanity was when she saw that the two teenagers the faces belonged to had collars tight around their necks.

She didn't see who they were trailing behind at that moment. Though when she got to her first class, the only available seat was beside someone with two slaves cowering behind them. She swallowed, recognizing the onyx hair of them, and sat down, trying to avoid examining them to see how bad the state of their bodies was. She also tried to avoid rubbing at her concealed scars—despite the warmth of the late summer day, she was wearing a dark red turtleneck—but didn't succeed.

Almost absently, she rubbed a finger along a faint scar on her face. The person beside her cleared their throat and she jerked her head over to look at them. It was a tired looking girl, with long black hair who Sakura suddenly recognized. A couple of years back, during one of her stints in the warehouse, that same girl had stared at her blankly, examining the fresh wounds and already forming map of scars that covered her—at that point naked—body.

"I'm Maiko." The girl introduced herself, extending a hand towards Sakura. For a moment, Sakura stared blankly at the extended hand, shrinking away automatically. Maiko pulled her hand back and smiled knowingly.

"I'm…S-Sakura."

"Nice to meet you. Did you recently move here?" She nodded.

"I was…adopted by the headmistress."

"Ah…" She sounded like she figured out something implied and it frightened Sakura. Would this girl recognize her as a slave and treat her like one? She'd seen that some freed slaves went through that if they were recognized. If you were lucky enough to be a slave that had been freed, your life generally ended up almost worse than when you _were_ a slave if people found out about that part of your past.

"What?" Sakura asked nervously.

"Nothing." Maiko yawned and put her head on her desk. "Sasuke…are you taking notes today or is Aria?"

"A-Aria…"

"Okay." With that, Maiko brushed her dark hair into her face and fell asleep. Both of her slaves sighed and shook their heads. Aria looked at Sakura, smiled a little, and pulled out a notebook from the bag at Maiko's feet. Sakura looked away from them, resisting actually asking them the question that was burning at the back of her throat.

_How did you two end up like this?_ She desperately wanted to know what had happened that those two had survived and ended up slaves. She honestly hoped that they hadn't been in the hands of too many violent owners, but she knew from experience that very few were gentle with their slaves. Maiko _seemed_ nice enough as far as Sakura could tell, but she'd barely met the girl.

When classes started, Sakura really paid attention. She'd been in school before—in the same position as Sasuke and Aria, on her knees within arm's reach of her master—but had never really had the chance to learn much. Excruciating punishments made the position she'd had to sit in too painful to be able to pay attention to much other than keeping quiet so as to keep from getting struck. When she looked at Sasuke and Aria—realizing that Maiko was clearly planning to sleep through all of her classes—she was surprised. Aria was rapidly taking notes, probably copying the lecture word-for-word, and Sasuke was drawing in a sketchbook.

XX

Sure enough, when the last class before lunch ended, Maiko was still fast asleep. No one seemed bothered by this, so Sakura assumed that it was a normal thing for her. But she figured that someone should wake up the dark haired girl, so she cleared her throat.

"M-Maiko-san?" She didn't respond until Aria leaned down close to her face and moved her hair a little. Maiko moaned tiredly and sat up.

"Hm…lunchtime already…?" Aria nodded and stepped back. With a large stretch, Maiko stood. Sasuke and Aria waited until she'd looked Sakura over and started for the door. Sakura blinked in surprise and gathered her things to go to lunch.

She decided to eat her lunch in the courtyard and got flagged down. "Hey Sakura, come sit with us!" She paused, shifting nervously, but went and sat with Maiko and her two slaves. The whole situation had Sakura very nervous. "So. Where'd you get that scar on your face?"

"Um…well…" Maiko leaned in close to her and she flinched back.

"I remember seeing you." She said quietly. "I'm glad to see that you're not in that situation anymore." She smiled and ventured a hand to touch the scar on Sakura's face. Sakura flinched away, trembling. "Sorry." Maiko's hand returned to her side. "I don't think about how other people will react to my movements sometimes. And you've been through a lot."

Sakura watched her nervously and the smile returned to her face. "I didn't properly introduce you. These two are Sasuke and his twin sister Aria." The two nodded a little and went back to eating in silence.

"Nice to…meet you." She said that because it was the right thing to say. She was sure that those two wanted their history known just as much as she did. But her hesitation tipped Maiko off. Sakura was beginning to think that the girl was annoyingly perceptive.

"You've met before?" Her tone was surprised, but she didn't appear shocked or confused. She looked at the two slaves and they nodded.

"A…long time ago." Aria whispered. _That_ had Maiko confused.

"Then, before you two were sold?" All three of them nodded. "Well…that's an odd coincidence…" She sighed. "Sakura, what all do you have this afternoon?"

"Um…Athletics, art, and choir…"

"I'm in all three of those. Art and choir mostly for these two." She laughed a little at some private joke. "I'm honestly a horrible artist and can't sing a note to save my life." Sakura blinked in surprise, but remembered that Sasuke had been sketching during their morning classes. Did the choir _include_ slaves then? They didn't talk after that statement, as both girls ate their lunches and headed for the gym.

"So…does the choir…?" Sakura paused, unsure how to word the question without offending the two trailing behind them. There really was no way to word it without doing that, so she left it hanging in the air.

"Yea. If the owner allows it. I'm only enrolled in the class because Aria has the voice of an angel." Maiko said, smiling conspiratorially. "It's the same with art. You should see Sasuke's sketchbook." Both of them blushed brightly at her comments and Sakura smiled a little. Her assumption that Maiko was nice had been correct. Especially if the girl took two classes specifically for the benefit of her slaves.

Maiko laughed a little and put her hands behind her head as they went into the locker room to change into their athletics clothes. Sasuke and Aria stayed outside to wait for them. "People think I'm crazy, you know."

"Why?"

"Because I'm taking two classes specifically for the benefit of slaves. And then there's the fact that…well…" She blushed a little. "I've had plenty of offers at university to enroll…" Sakura blinked.

"You're still going here because of them?" She nodded once.

"Yea…crazy I know. But they enjoy school so much and well…I like seeing them so happy about taking notes and listening to lectures and doing homework…" She approached a locker and blinked at the note on one right beside hers. "Looks like they've got a locker set up for you."

"Okay." Sakura opened the locker and put her bag inside, pulling out her athletics clothes and scanning the room for a place to change. There were too many other girls in the room for her to be comfortable with stripping.

"What's wrong?"

"I…don't want to change in front of everyone…"

"No one's paying attention."

"I know but…" Maiko blinked as she realized why Sakura was so nervous.

"Oh…there's some showers right there around the corner in a separate room."

"Thanks." She hurried to the shower room and frowned at the mirrors covering the walls. She stripped and tried to avoid looking at her reflections. As it was, her athletics uniform was a pair of short shorts and a t-shirt. The scars on her arms and legs and the rest of the scar on her face—which ran the length of her upper body from the corner of her right eye to her naval—were painfully exposed. She took a shuddering breath before emerging from the room, trying to make herself remember that if anyone were to ask about her scars, she was going to say that she'd been in a car accident and had barely survived—which was partially true, she had barely survived some of the beatings that left her scarred.

Maiko blinked in surprise when she saw Sakura's scars. She rubbed her arms nervously. "Don't stare please…"

"Sorry. Man…that's pretty scary…" She paused. "Sorry again. Let's go." Abruptly, Maiko grabbed Sakura's hand and pulled her out of the locker room. Sakura gasped in surprise and when they stopped moving, she shrank away from Maiko. "What's wrong with…oh." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts. "Sorry about that."

XX

Sakura sat with Maiko during Art and decided quickly that she was a horrible artist. So she gave up on the shapeless lump that was supposed to be a rabbit on her easel and watched Sasuke draw. The rabbit that they were using as a model was perfectly replicated on the page Sasuke was drawing on in his sketchbook. The rabbit was nibbling on a bit of clover at the base of a tree in a lush wood. Aria giggled quietly and whispered in her brother's ear.

He blushed brightly and closed his sketchbook. Sakura quickly went back to attempting to draw the rabbit. She looked over at Maiko and saw that the girl was fast asleep, a set of circles and ovals that barely could pass for a rabbit scrawled on her easel. She'd done better than Sakura. Her circles were lumpy. She glanced at Sasuke to see that he had gone back to drawing.

It made her wonder again how they'd ended up being slaves. She _knew_ that it couldn't have been the same reason for her slavery. And she knew that they were very lucky to still be together and in the hands of someone so apparently kind as Maiko. She'd known one girl who had started out with a sister but they'd been separated almost immediately after they'd been put in that specific warehouse.

The teacher started making her rounds and paused at Sakura's easel. Kurenai-sensei wasn't a frightening woman, but Sakura was pretty jumpy, so she cringed when she stopped walking to examine the poor drawing.

"You should relax a little. If you try too hard, it ends up like that." She said gently. "Keep it up and I'm sure you'll get better. Just don't go sleeping in classes like Maiko-san here." She laughed a little and crouched to take a look at Sasuke's sketch. "Looks great, Sasuke-kun. Though…I think the proportions of this clover and the tree roots are a bit off." He nodded a little and immediately started to fixing it.

Sakura decided she liked the art teacher very much. Even though she was still pretty jumpy and still trying to overcome that habit of cringing at the approach of anything that moved.

XX

"You know, if you keep being so jumpy, people are going to wonder about you." Maiko commented as they headed for the choir hall.

"What do you mean?"

"You're not a slave anymore, you don't have to be afraid of everything that moves." She whispered.

"I know that…" She responded just as quietly. "This is my first time being around anyone but Shishou since…"

"Ah…"

"And it's sort of a habit now…I'm trying not to…" Maiko almost put a hand on her shoulder to encourage her, but Sasuke beat her to the punch, resting his hand on her arm lightly. Sakura flinched and stepped away. "Let's…just get to class." She quickened her step and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

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Okay, so it's a little slow. But this is just the beginning. No worries…this story is also mostly fluff, and I'm unfortunately one that has to be in the mood to write fluff. I'm quicker to write things concerning psychological torture and twisted things like that. I am a twisted mind…


	2. NOTICE

Moving to DeviantArt~! Preexisting posts here will remain, but anything new will be found at .com

Stories with mature content (Pretty much all of them) will require a DeviantArt account to view so I can keep maturity filters correct. Go watch me there and keep an eye out~!

I'm doing this to satisfy my own beliefs as there is no mature content filter on . My preexisting stories will also be available in edited versions on DeviantArt, so feel free to read those and tell me what you think.


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